Kim
from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking and
dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama’s
ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old man’s
mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to the
steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again, indeed,
he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said,
the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content to be
with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from
the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some
grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years ago.
He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker
walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining
knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale
called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and
down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him
for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity,
abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not
over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their
stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food, as
the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge,
Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave the soulless
woman a blessing.
But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the
crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Kabul grapes and
gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor—a lean, dry Oorya—begging them
to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed in
her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.
“Now do I remember”—the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new
proposition. “She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.”
Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow’s manger, telling stories to a
village smith’s children.
“She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not
forgotten her,” he said. “Let her acquire merit. Send word that we will
come.”
They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were
overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine
tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who was
under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing of the
money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory, and from a
discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not less than a dozen
servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have flung European
audiences into unclean dismay.
“But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the _parao_,” she
shrilled. “I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of my
daughter’s son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and
useless.”
For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and
drink were brought; and in the evening—the smoke-scented evening,
copper-dun and turquoise across the fields—it pleased her to order her
palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight;
and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped.
“Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise; but
with this rogue, who can be too careful?”
“Maharanee,” said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, “is it my
fault that none other than a Sahib—a _polis_-sahib—called the Maharanee
whose face he—” “Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we travel—thou
knowest the proverb.”
“Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of Delights?”
“To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of the
bloom of my beauty.” She chuckled like a contented parrot above the
sugar lump. “Now tell me of thy goings and comings—as much as may be
without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thine
eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again this
year, but my daughter—we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect
of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy
Holy One—stand aside, rogue—a charm against most lamentable windy
colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter’s eldest. Two years back
he gave me a powerful spell.”
“Oh, Holy One!” said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama’s rueful
face.
“It is true. I gave her one against wind.”
“Teeth—teeth—teeth,” snapped the old woman.
“‘Cure them if they are sick,’” Kim quoted relishingly, ‘“but by no
means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.’”
“That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual
importunity.” The lama groaned as the Unjust Judge had groaned before
him. “Thus it comes—take note, my _chela_—that even those who would
follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days through, when
the child was sick, she talked to me.”
“Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy’s mother knew nothing,
and the father—in the nights of the cold weather it was—‘Pray to the
Gods,’ said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!”
“I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?”
“‘To abstain from action is well—except to acquire merit.’”
“Ah _chela_, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.”
“He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,” said the old lady. “But
all priests are alike.”
Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her flippancy.
“To importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity.”
“There is a talking _mynah_”—the thrust came back with the
well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger—“over the stables
which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget
honour to my guests, but if ye had seen _him_ double his fists into his
belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: ‘Here is the pain!’
ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the _hakim’s_ medicine. He
sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv’s own bull. _He_
does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the
in-auspicious colour of the bottles.”
The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness
towards the room prepared.
“Thou hast angered him, belike,” said Kim.
“Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but a
grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for
bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter’s son is grown, he
will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new _hakim’s_
drugs.”
“Who is the _hakim_, Maharanee?”
“A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca—a master
of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a
small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,
vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in
Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack
women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (_hakims_
and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it,
gone to cover.”
While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting
unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: “This house is a
cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and—priests. Let the boy
stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?” He
raised his voice respectfully: “Sahiba, the _hakim_ sleeps after his
meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.”
Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a
Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good
game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should
be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard English
advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. St Xavier’s boys
sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates;
for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is
most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one
parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.
“Yes,” said Kim, with measured scorn. “Their stock-in-trade is a little
coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are
broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children—who
are not born.”
The old lady chuckled. “Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh? _I_
never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One writes me a good amulet by the
morning.”
“None but the ignorant deny”—a thick, heavy voice boomed through the
darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting—“None but the ignorant
deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of
medicines.”
“A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: ‘I will open a grocer’s
shop,’” Kim retorted.
Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to
attention.
“The priest’s son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says he:
‘Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones.’”
Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went on:
“I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the wisdom of
the Sahibs.”
“The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when
they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,” piped the voice inside
the palanquin.
“I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and
angry men. _Siná_ well compounded when the moon stands in the proper
House; yellow earths I have—_arplan_ from China that makes a man renew
his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the
best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before—”
“That I surely believe,” said Kim.
“They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give _my_ sick the mere ink
in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend
and wrestle with the evil.”
“Very mightily they do so,” sighed the old lady.
The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy,
studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. “But for my fate,
which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a
degree from the great school at Calcutta—whither, maybe, the son of
this House shall go.”
“He shall indeed. If our neighbour’s brat can in a few years be made an
F A” (First Arts—she used the English word, of which she had heard so
often), “how much more shall children clever as some that I know bear
away prizes at rich Calcutta.”
“Never,” said the voice, “have I seen such a child! Born in an
auspicious hour, and—but for that colic which, alas! turning into black
cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon—destined to many years, he is
enviable.”
“_Hai mai!_” said the old lady. “To praise children is inauspicious, or
I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded,
and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we
know ... The child’s father is away too, and I must be _chowkedar_
(watchman) in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the
_hakim_ and the young priest settle between them whether charms or
medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the
guests, and—round the homestead go I!”
The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of
dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba—her failings, her tongue, and her
large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial custom, but
no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction for any gift
under heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her formal
inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to Mussoorie.
Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The _hakim_,
still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim